Want To Feel How It Feels
by Gypsy Love
Summary: Craig's journal where he talks about being abused by his dad when he won't talk about it to other people. It's sort of a response to Dude Lord of Wierd's review of another story of mine.
1. Chapter 1

If you want to feel it, I don't know how to make you feel it. I won't even talk about it. Not at all. And sometimes I won't even think of it, won't acknowledge it. So that's why I'm writing it down. It's the truth, and I guess it needs to be told even if I keep my mouth shut.

My mother died three years ago. She had cancer. Cancer takes a person and sort of turns them inside out, changes the colors of things. Her skin used to be tan, like she'd spent all day by a pool or by the ocean, the same color as my sister Angie's skin. But cancer made her pale, leeched away all the color until her skin was translucent. And her hair used to be dark, just a shade darker than mine. Cancer made it thin and gray and finally it all fell out. Cancer changes things. My mother used to be beautiful and she was always beautiful but the cancer made it a tragic beauty, a fleeting kind of beauty. It changed the light in her eyes, the normal living light dulled and then became fever bright.

Before my mother died she left my dad and me. We felt it in different ways but it hurt both of us. I'm not so sure about how my dad felt it, but I know it made him angry. It made me angry but I denied this anger. I loved my mother and didn't want to be angry with her. So I shoved it way down, and pretended that things were fine. I pretended that things were just like before. I felt like she should have taken me with her and maybe she wanted to, maybe she couldn't. I was nine when she left, and I didn't understand certain things that I understand now. I didn't understand how she was trapped in the marriage with my dad and that she got away. She escaped, like someone in a prison, beyond barbed wire fences and guards. It would have been too dangerous to take me with her.

My dad. It's hard to know what to say about him. He's smart. Scary smart. He's a surgeon. See, it's all short bursts about him. When he's near me I'm nervous all the time, even when he's being calm and nice and…normal. I'm nervous because his temper can come from nowhere and fill the room. His eyes behind his black framed glasses get this sharp look, this narrowed angry look focused on me like that red dot that shows someone where to shoot a gun. He has this intensity that makes it hard to breathe.

So my mom left when I was nine and she got sick when I was ten. When I was ten my dad, he hit me with this, his belt. Shit. If I make you feel it I have to feel it, too. So I'd just messed the house up, this colossal mess like kids can make. It was one of those days when the sun is all hazy and yellow and it fell through every window and made squares on the rug and the toys and the furniture. And I saw the dust kind of flashing in the bars of sunlight. And I'm looking at some toy, just this smooth bit of colored plastic in my hand, and then I hear my name.

"Craig!" His voice was so deep, so full of hate, like the hate could split his words apart. I dropped the toy and it didn't make a sound because of the rug. I looked up at him and it's the first time I remember noticing the narrowed eyes behind the glasses, and his teeth were yellow and sharp and crooked and clenched together.

I can't talk, I can't breathe, my heart is beating so hard. It was this fear that I felt in my bloodstream, I felt it with every beat of my heart. He's standing over me and takes his belt off so fast and it arcs up and slams down on me, across my back. It's like a bite, a sting, and the belt makes this cracking noise in the air. Tears come to my eyes and the tears make me angry, like I'm just a baby. But I can't stop crying as the belt comes down again and again.

That was the first of it. And the next day was the first of the apologies and promises that it would never happen again. When he apologizes his voice is soft, controlled, and his eyes are sad. Behind his glasses, but I can see the light blue color and the lines around them and the sadness. I never quite believed those things like I did the first time he said them. That was faith. I've lost that faith now.


	2. Chapter 2

Hmmmm. Yeah. The worst times. The things I don't talk about, try not to even think about. Maybe it's better that way. Maybe thinking about them makes them worse. But sometimes I can't help it. It occurs to me, things happen and I remember. Like junior high. God, junior high sucked.

It wasn't like now, when it's kind of clear that dad was…wrong. Being hit with belts and fists and thrown to the floor, a cement floor, and kicked, that's wrong. I can see that. Especially living with Joey. Living in this sort of chaos of everyone running around and people kind of yelling sometimes but laughing a lot and no one ever gets hit. It's like I can almost glimpse that this is how it's supposed to be. The way it wasn't for me.

Junior high was when things just started to slip. Since mom was gone there was no where else to go. The visits with Joey and Angela abruptly stopped, and we lived too far and I was too young to get there on my own. I'd call sometimes, though, to hear Angie's voice. Always when dad wasn't home and with my heart pounding. By that time I knew they were off limits.

But junior high was when things had to be so neat around the house, when the stress from dad's job was really getting to him, when I could barely breathe around him. Everything, sometimes, was this big crisis. Rings on the table from glasses of juice, dust on the furniture. Everything was so focused, so nit picked. It was like living under this microscope. Of course all the flaws showed.

And each time, each hit and strap with his belt, it made me so surprised. I was like willfully forgetting that it had happened before because each time I swore I'd be better. That I could stop it from happening again. Which I couldn't, because maybe some of it wasn't about me. But it sure felt like it was about me when he was screaming that I was such a screw up and that I never did anything right and I felt those kicks and punches, felt his fist connect with my bones.

It was this weird divided time. I'd pretend all the time that things were fine. At school, at my friends' houses, I'd pretend I was just like them. No one hurt me, of course not. I didn't have to wear long sleeve shirts in the warm weather and pretend to be sick so I wouldn't have to go to gym class. I didn't feel this low ache in my arms and legs as blood vessels knitted themselves back together. I'd never stared in awe in the mirror at bruises so dark and painful that they were black. Black. Now I know that that deep black color means that the bone has bled. But sometimes I knew full well what was going on. I sensed that crackle in the air, and I knew that no matter what I did or didn't do that he would beat me.

I was so far from getting away from it then because most of the time I couldn't even admit it. It made me feel like it was my fault. It was embarrassing. It still is. It is embarrassing to be on the floor and curled up in pain. It's embarrassing to not be able to stop crying. It's embarrassing flinching away from sudden movements and jumping at loud noises. Like when sometimes Joey gets this certain tone in his voice, a tone my dad used to get, too, but with him it would end up so much worse. Well, when Joey starts sounding like that I get this glazed, detached look, and I'll remember some seriously fucked up shit. Then Joey always notices the look, and he stops whatever ranting lecture he'd been started on. And he'll say, "Craig?" all quiet and concerned and I'll blink back to reality, to Joey's kitchen, to chaos. And what can I say? I'm not so sure I'm okay.

Yeah, junior high was this rotten time. After every single episode with my dad I'd rebuild my entire world. I'd convince myself that it would never happen again, that it couldn't happen again. Some people say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting a different result.

So in a lot of ways it was the worst time because there was no way out and I didn't even realize I had to get out. I couldn't even see it yet.


	3. Chapter 3

There used to be this funny crackle in the air, this anger you could see. There was this funny thought I had, like what I did could effect the outcome of things. I thought if I was good enough, if I kept things neat enough and was nice enough and did well in school and was home on time and said all the right things, I thought my dad wouldn't hit me anymore. I really believe this for a long time. I believed it was my fault.

Maybe he didn't want to do it. Maybe he couldn't help it. Maybe he was sorry, and that's why he bought me things and promised that it would never happen again. That was a lie, whether he knew it or not.

On the outside things looked fine. We had a nice house and my dad had a good job and I did fairly well in school and I wasn't in trouble all the time and things looked fine. I don't know how fine I looked, because I started losing weight because I just couldn't seem to eat enough. I started getting real jumpy. I noticed it, too. I'd jump at loud noises and flinch away from people and I lied all the time, I always told people what I thought they wanted to hear. I was a mess, a real mess. Concentrating in school was becoming harder and harder, and science, my worst subject, was becoming impossible.

I'd fall asleep in school and jerk awake. I dreaded going home, dreaded what kind of mood my dad would be in. There were all kinds of degrees of the violence. There were the words edged in the angry tone, there were the veiled insults. There were the sudden shoves of plates and glasses to the floor where they would shatter. There was the slamming of doors and the punching of walls and the shoves and the slaps. There were the forceful grabs of my wrists and being lifted off the floor, there was being screamed at, there was being punched so hard, my arms aching with it, my thighs and back aching with it. I'd cringe and brace myself for that next punch, thinking I couldn't take it, and it hurt so much. There was being kicked, kicked in the stomach and the rib cage and the back. There was having my body slammed to the floor, there was passing out and pissing blood and it hurt to move, it hurt to breathe.

As ninth grade started I felt like it was time for it all to stop. Maybe I could run away or maybe I could kill myself. Either would be okay. I guess I was ready to give up.

That night in the cemetery I was at the end of my rope. It was so cold, and my fingers were numb as I reached out to trace the letters of my mother's name on the gravestone. I couldn't believe she was dead, really dead, and I'd never ever see her again. I wanted to see her so bad, I needed her. I needed a lot of things. I could feel the ache in my ribs and back from the last beating. I needed all the violence to stop. I couldn't take it anymore. The tears were threatening to fall, but they weren't yet. Then I heard my name. It was Joey. I thought Joey had written me off because I tried to take Angela with me. I thought everyone had written me off.

And when Joey came toward me I stood up and spun around and jerked away from him. I couldn't stand to be touched, not anymore. Not when every touch caused pain. Not after all those beatings, and I started to cry just a little, and I knew I was so damaged, beyond damaged.

"C'mon, let's go…" Joey said, still walking toward me, and I laughed and looked at him.

"Where am I gonna go, huh? Back home, to dad, so he could…"

"What? What does he do to you?" Joey said, and I looked down and looked away, the tears coming for real now.

"He hits you doesn't he?" Joey said, and I saw the deep concern in his eyes, and I wanted to tell him the truth, I just couldn't seem to say it.

"Doesn't he?" Joey said in a thick whisper, and I nodded, and let Joey hug me even though it hurt. It hurt my back and my ribs where I'd been kicked the most, and it hurt to be touched because it scared me. I cried even harder then, because now Joey knew the truth I'd tried so hard to hide and because being hugged was hurting me and I cringed inside of it, pulling away from him even as he hugged me tighter. I was so fucked up. I knew it. I knew I wasn't anywhere near normal.


End file.
